Recent years have seen outbreaks in Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.

Isolation equipment

"We got the first results from Lyon yesterday which informed us of the presence of the Ebola virus as the cause of this outbreak," Guinean health ministry official Sakoba Keita told AFP on Saturday.

"We are overwhelmed in the field, we are fighting against this epidemic with all the means we have at our disposal with the help of our partners but it is difficult."

Medical aid charity Medecins sans Frontieres said on Saturday it would strengthen its team in Guinea and fly some 33 tonnes of drugs and isolation equipment in from Belgium and France.

Dr Armand Sprecher, an emergency physician and epidemiologist working with MSF in Guinea, told the BBC that doctors had to identify all patients with the disease and monitor anyone they had been in contact with during their illness.

The latest outbreak could be brought under control if people acted quickly, he said.

"Based on our history with these sorts of outbreaks it will happen. Ideally, sooner rather than later," said Dr Sprecher.

"The more quickly we can contain this the fewer cases we'll have, then the smaller the scale of the epidemic. That's the idea of going in as strong as we can early on."